Wildfires (Bushfires) are an increasing threat throughout all areas around the globe having devastating effects including loss of human lives, wildlife, structure loss and are costing billions of dollars each year to contain, extinguish and rebuild the lost property as well as psychological effects to those directly affected by such fires.
The entire world, specifically the United States, Australia, Italy, France, China, Russia, Israel, and Greece experience major wildfires, so a cost effective solution must be sought to prevent the major increase in wildfires throughout the decades.
Current methods of detection are through visual means and only alert emergency services once the fire has consumed a vast parcel of land. Once the fire is underway, information about the fire front, including exact location, size of the front, direction and speed becomes hampered by smoke and poor visibility and cannot be viewed by air. Fire command posts have to rely on information provided at the fire front, which is limited to a particular area with fire personnel forwarding information via radio to the command post whilst continuing to fight the fire front. Aerial surveillance of the overall wildfire area is often covered by dense smoke, limited visibility and provides insufficient information regarding the actual position of the fire front.
Current Detection Methods
Current fire detection methods are largely performed through visual sightings. Such sightings are limited to daylight hours and involve a sighting of smoke from an aircraft or land-based person.
Other methods of detection are through satellite images of an area that shows a heat signature in a particular area. However due to the fact that satellites are constantly moving, detection is limited because a satellite passing over a specific area can be as infrequent as twice per day.
A further method is the use of visual cameras mounted atop mountain ridges to view a vast area awaiting the signs of smoke coming from a particular area. The limitations of camera systems is that they are only useful during the daylight hours, require human intervention to determine the image and fail to provide the exact location of the fire source as they have a limited ability to pin point the location with a 5 mile radius.
Another method of detection is through manned and unmanned aircraft that possess infrared technology to view heat sources on the ground and identify the heat source. The limitations using this type of system of detection is that aircraft rarely operate at night, flight times and manpower is expensive and limited to one area at a time—only the area currently being covered by the aircraft.
It is these issues that have brought about the present invention which relates to a solution to these issues, that is a cost effective, ground based system that incorporates multiple sensor units that form a network that can cover a specific area with the ability to detect the onset of a fire and send, real time data to pin point the source as well as provide climatic conditions such as wind speed and direction to provide a continual stream of information about the ignition source, where it is traveling to, and at what speed to enable emergency services to deploy resources to the most effective point to rapidly contain and extinguish the fire. Fire fighters, command centers and mobile command posts can continually view this stream of vital information that is ground based, located at the fire front itself to enable continued strategic decisions to be made.